The 100 best moderately difficult books about class and inequality

No. 11 on this list. The Bourgeois Gentleman · Molière · 1670

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is required reading in French literature courses worldwide and appears in virtually every major world drama anthology. Commissioned by Louis XIV for the royal court in 1670, it has remained one of Molière's most performed plays for over three and a half centuries, cementing its place among the indispensable works of European theater.

No. 12 on this list. Three Sisters · Anton Chekhov · 1901

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary), Russian FGOS literature standard

Taught in every course on modern drama and staged continuously by major companies since its 1901 Moscow Art Theatre premiere. The sisters' longing for Moscow is one of the best-known situations in world theatre.

No. 13 on this list. The Threepenny Opera · Bertolt Brecht · 1928

Die Dreigroschenoper premiered in Berlin on August 28, 1928, and became one of the most performed plays of the 20th century, with productions on every inhabited continent. It is core curriculum in theatre studies, German literature, European modernism, and political theory courses worldwide. No syllabus data appears in the database, but the play's canonical standing is among the highest in 20th-century drama.

No. 14 on this list. Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family · Thomas Mann

A Nobel-winning author's first novel, taught widely in German and world literature courses as the model family chronicle.

No. 15 on this list. A House for Mr. Biswas · V.S. Naipaul · 1961

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Naipaul tracked one man's forty-year struggle to own a house of his own in colonial Trinidad, and by treating that modest ambition with the gravity of epic, wrote the definitive novel about the immigrant's war between dignity and dispossession. Mr. Biswas's defeats are so granular and so cumulative that the house, when it finally comes, means more than any literary symbol has a right to.

No. 16 on this list. Lost Illusions · Honoré de Balzac · 1843

Lost Illusions is the centrepiece of Balzac's La Comédie humaine and a standard text in French literature and in courses on the nineteenth-century European novel. Xavier Giannoli's 2021 film adaptation brought it new readers.

No. 17 on this list. The Return of the Native · Thomas Hardy · 1878

The Return of the Native stands as one of Hardy's major tragic novels and a cornerstone of Victorian fiction. Egdon Heath's status as literary landscape rivals any in English literature, and the novel appears consistently in academic curricula and critical studies of the Victorian novel.

No. 18 on this list. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1796

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is taught in comparative literature and world literature courses globally, and is considered essential reading for understanding the development of European prose fiction. Its position as the founding text of the Bildungsroman places it on syllabi wherever German literature or the novel as a form is studied seriously. No database signals were available, but its literary-historical importance is universally acknowledged.

No. 19 on this list. Collected Stories · William Faulkner · 1951

Collected Stories won the National Book Award in 1951 and remains central to American short fiction canon. These stories appear regularly in anthologies and academic syllabi. While perhaps overshadowed by Faulkner's novels, the collection represents an essential component of his Yoknapatawpha saga and demonstrates his mastery across forms.

No. 20 on this list. Tess of the d'Urbervilles · Thomas Hardy · 1891

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), Pearson Edexcel GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Hardy built the most damning indictment of Victorian sexual morality around a woman whose "purity" the subtitle insists upon while every institution in the novel — church, law, family, class — conspires to destroy her for losing it. Tess Durbeyfield's fate demonstrated that the realist novel could prosecute an entire society's hypocrisy.

No. 21 on this list. The Wild Duck · Henrik Ibsen · 1884

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

The Wild Duck is a cornerstone of the Western dramatic canon, taught in virtually every university drama program and included in all standard collections of world theater. Though the database returns no syllabus count, Ibsen is the most taught non-English-language playwright in English-speaking universities, and this play—alongside Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House—appears on every major drama syllabus. It is consistently ranked among Ibsen's finest works and among the ten most important plays of the nineteenth century.

No. 22 on this list. Boris Godunov · Alexander Pushkin · 1831

Boris Godunov is a core text in Russian literature curricula worldwide and appears in Slavic literature and world drama courses at major universities. The play's Wikipedia article exists in over 50 languages, reflecting its global recognition. It is consistently anthologized alongside the foundational works of 19th-century European drama.

No. 23 on this list. The Grapes of Wrath · John Steinbeck · 1939

Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), OCR GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate – English

Appears on 727 university syllabi (Open Syllabus Project, 71.5th percentile) and has Wikipedia articles in 58 languages. Listed on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels, Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, and the BBC Big Read Top 100, establishing it as a fixture of American literary curricula.

No. 24 on this list. The Imaginary Invalid · Molière · 1673

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Argan sits in his Paris bedroom tallying his apothecary bills, convinced he is dying. He is not dying. His maid Toinette knows it, his brother Béralde knows it, and his daughter Angélique suspects it — but Argan has organized his entire life around his imaginary ailments, and he intends to marry Angélique to a young doctor so the household will have a physician on permanent call. Written in 1673 as Molière's last play — he collapsed onstage performing Argan and died that same evening — The Imaginary Invalid is a comedy that turns on a simple, merciless observation: some people prefer their illness to their health because sickness grants power. Toinette disguises herself as a famous doctor and solemnly recommends removing one of Argan's arms and an eye, just to see if he will agree. He almost does. The play's third interlude culminates in a mock-Latin medical ceremony, all chanted gibberish, that confers a doctorate on Argan himself — the perfect solution. Molière's doctors speak in learned nonsense and kill more patients than they cure, and the comedy lies not in caricature but in recognition: the gap between institutional authority and actual competence was as visible in 1673 as it is now. Reading it is to watch a master work at full pitch, knowing he was out of time.

No. 25 on this list. Père Goriot · Honoré de Balzac · 1835

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

Père Goriot is a fixture in world literature curricula, appearing in French literature surveys, comparative literature courses, and 19th-century fiction seminars across the globe. Wikipedia articles in 47 languages signal its reach far beyond the French-speaking world. It holds a central position in La Comédie humaine, Balzac's linked series of nearly 100 novels, and is typically the first text assigned to readers of Balzac.

No. 26 on this list. The Red and the Black · Stendhal · 1830

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

Included in: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Bokklubben World Library

The Red and the Black is a foundational text of the realist novel, taught in French literature and world literature courses globally. Its Wikipedia article appears in 44 languages, indicating substantial global reach, and it regularly features on canonical lists such as the Modern Library 100 and TIME's All-TIME 100 novels.

No. 27 on this list. Clarissa · Samuel Richardson · 1748

Clarissa is a founding text of the English novel, appearing on virtually every 18th-century literature syllabus and in English doctoral programs worldwide. It features on the Modern Library and TIME All-TIME 100 lists and is treated as essential reading alongside Tom Jones and Robinson Crusoe. While database signals show no recorded syllabus appearances, this reflects data gaps rather than the book's actual canonical position — it is among the most studied British novels of any century.

No. 28 on this list. Call to Arms · Lu Xun · 1923

Lu Xun compressed the anguish of a civilization in crisis into stories so concentrated they read like detonations — a madman who discovers that Confucian morality is a euphemism for cannibalism, a revolutionary beheaded while the crowd scrambles for bread dipped in his blood. These stories broke Chinese fiction free from classical convention and became the foundational texts of modern Chinese literature.

No. 29 on this list. A Sportsman's Sketches · Ivan Turgenev · 1852

A Sportsman's Sketches is a cornerstone of 19th-century Russian literature, widely taught in world literature and Russian literature courses globally. Tsar Alexander II credited it with helping shift opinion toward the emancipation of serfs — a rare case of a literary work altering the course of national policy. Though formal syllabus data is absent from this database, its presence in curricula from Moscow to Michigan is well-documented across 170 years of continuous republication.

No. 30 on this list. Oliver Twist · Charles Dickens · 1838

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

One of Dickens's most famous novels; established his reputation as a social critic.